You all are here as we begin a new series tonight through the Book of Hosea. Let me see, I don't think we have any announcements. If I do out of the ordinary, I'll bring them in at the end. But thanks to Pastor Jeff Crossing for filling in for me on Sunday, I appreciate him. And turn to dad, Colorado, and for our great musician Dr. Steve Fain for leading us and singing Sunday. I had a good time in Iowa with the conference there at a little town in Iowa, Wall Lake, Iowa, little farming town. It was a beautiful little area, actually, and enjoyed driving through the heartland here to there to here and seeing some good right dividers. Had several join us, like Madison's parents from Green Bay drove down. I think they won the award for driving the farthest outside of me, but it was a good conference anyway. Okay, with that, let me lead us in the word of prayer and let's dive into Hosea. Heavenly Father, you're good to us and we're grateful, we're grateful for the fellowship we've had here in this place already tonight and now the fellowship here in this room around the Word. And we just pray that as we study together this new book for us, this Book of Hosea, that it would give us some insight. We pray we would rightly divide it, applying it where it belongs and not where it doesn't belong, and that that would help us even interpret some things in the New Testament as it's quoted so often. We ask this in Jesus name, Amen. And with that we do begin session one on Hosea, rightly divided, verse by verse, of course, right division is all about figuring out what's for us and what's not for us. And I know that you are advanced right dividing students and so you would immediately say, well, Hosea, that's Old Testament, that's before the dispensation of the grace of God began. So we're not going to find our material there for daily living or prophecies that relate directly to us because we live in a period that is not prophetic. It is a period that was a mystery period hidden to the prophets. And if it was hidden to the prophets, it would be awfully hard for them to write about it. So we know, OK, you don't take it, take Hosea. However, the Book of Hosea, even some of what we'll look at tonight is often taken as a foreshadow to us, the church, when we rightly divide it, I'm going to say it's not a foreshadow to us the church at all. It is a foreshadow of one thing up close and one thing out far and that we're going to look at tonight, especially up close, but there'll be some hints of that which is far away as we begin Hosea verse by verse, rightly divided. And let's pull up Bibliffi and see Hosea, chapter one, verse one, and do some introduction of this man Hosea, by the way, I am going to call him Hosea. If we had a Jewish audience, you probably would hear it pronounced. It is very close to the name Yeshua, which of course is used of Jesus. It's also the name for Joshua. Joshua Hoshia hosea. They're all basically the same name with perhaps a little bit of provincial difference given there with the time period. But Hosea or Hoshia, of course, you know the name Yeshua means what? Actually, it doesn't mean Jesus. Jesus is the Greek translation of yeshua. So if you're a Greek, you would pronounce it Jesus. If you were Hebrew, you would pronounce it Yeshua. And they both mean savior or salvation. Salvation. So Hoshia is related to that. It's a salvation kind of word to it. I won't spend any time other than just saying this here. There is a possibility that we don't know the guy's name, even though it is right there, jose or Hoshia. The reason I say that is because this is kind of the form of the word. If it had said Yeshua, we would have known. Okay, that's a name. It's a name that means savior. But here it's used in the sense that it's really a title. So his title is Hoshia, but maybe that's his name also. And there are a number of places in the Old Testament, especially, where we look at some things and we say, okay, is that the guy's title or is that the guy's name? I'm not actually sure. Like, for example, we talk about, especially if we were talking about the Exodus, we talk about Pharaoh all the time. You remember Pharaoh, his armies went in the sea and all that. What was Pharaoh's name? Let's go for Pharaoh. Pharaoh wasn't his name. Pharaoh was his title. What was his name? Well, there's lots of speculation about that, but this could be a title, and if it is, that adds a little bit to something I'm going to say. In a little bit, we'll see. But we're going to use it as a name and we're going to pronounce it Jose. How's that? We're a good American, gentle audience, and Jose is what we know him by, and Jose is how we pronounce it. So it says, the word of the Lord that came unto Hosea, the son of Bere in the days of Uziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, kings of Judah, and in the days of Jaraboam, the son of Josh, king of Israel. Now, I thought about spending the rest of session one giving you all the details about you, Ziah, Jotham, Ahaz, Hezekiah, and Jeremiah, but I decided you wouldn't like it if I did. So let's just leave it at what he does with it and just say these are the important kings. My guess is, because you came on a Wednesday night, you've heard these names before, right? Especially Uziya. Uziya is associated strongly with another prophet. Remember him in the year of King Uziah. I saw the Lord high and lifted up. Remember that? That was Isaiah. Isaiah ministered in the year of King Uzaiah, or Uzaiah as we are pronouncing it here. Now, Uziah. Joseph A. Hasn't hesitiah were kings of Judah. Time for the prequiz. Judah is the northern kingdom or the southern kingdom? Southern Kingdom. You're right. Judah is the good guys, so to speak. If all you got is Judah and Israel, judah is the good guys. Israel is the northern kingdom. The northern kingdom broke off. If you want a handy little way to remember some of this, northern kingdom in K, southern Kingdom, SK. Now, Northern Kingdom had no kings who were good. Southern Kingdom had some kings that were good. So some of these might have been good because they were southern Kingdom, isaiah, Jotham, Ahaz, and hezekiah, however, Hosea, was a prophet to the northern kingdom of Israel. So he mentions these southern kingdom kings because that is really the group of people that God is dealing directly with there. And so for the people of God to know, hey, what time period is that's the best thing? And then it comes in the days of Jeraam, son of Josh, king of Israel. The challenge is there were two Jeraboems. This one is the son of Joash. But we still don't actually know, because in the way these genealogies are done, sometimes son of Joash doesn't necessarily mean son of Joash. It means one of the descendants of Joe Ash, of the family of Joe Ashe, so to speak. And so we don't really know if this is jaraboem one or jaraboem two. Probably jaraboam two is nearly the last, the next of the kings of Israel, the Northern Kingdom. I'm going to put it probably in that date he reigned 40 something years. Going back through these rains, there are some chronological issues. If we really wanted to dig into it and get all that, we could dig those out and show all the possibilities and everything that goes there. But my guess is for a practical study like this, you say I'm good with knowing that it was about that time prior to the destruction of the northern kingdom of Israel and during the reigns of these particular kings. So we're talking about, let's say, 725 years before Christ is when this is taking place, roughly. And so for the purposes of this study, we're not going to analyze all of the details of this. But again, if you are just very eager student of history, it would be something that you would love to do. I happen to kind of be an eager student of history, so I would love to do it. But just in case you're not an eager student of history, we will pass up on this. Now, I want to give a premise for my study. I should get one of my question, the assumptions mugs up here. I got everything else in that pulpit but I want to give a premise for my study right up front. You know that, of course, we question the assumptions, and assumptions are easier to question if you just put them out right up front on a billboard for everybody to see, right? Assumptions, I am convinced, determine your interpretation of Scripture more than anything else. Here's the assumption I'm bringing into it. So I want to tell you my assumption now, before I tell you that, let me also tell you, you all know this, but let me tell you how I study a book of scripture. I am not one of those preachers who studies the entire thing and knows the full scope and every detail about it. And then I come to you with a study. Rather, I am one that studies as I go and presents as I'm studying. And so that means that from time to time I will make an assumption that I will later have to say, oops, not really sorry about that. Just kidding. Or maybe even I was wrong. That's scary to say. Here's my assumption about the book of Hosea, that Hosea represents God. I think as we read even tonight, we will see these people are types, foreshadows, representations, allegorical presentations, even though they're historical people of something bigger than just a guy and his wife and his three kids. There's something more going on here. And you just read a few verses and you say, obviously this has some kind of significance to it. I'm going to be so bold as to say jose significance is he is going to play the God role in all of this. Maybe that's even why he's got this title of Savior. Here is the savior. Now, I am not, for these purposes, going to separate really the first person of the Trinity from the second person of the Trinity, god the Father versus God the Son. You have the word Yahweh that is going to be used. In fact, I think it is used right there at the beginning, the word of the Lord. Whenever you see it all caps like it is there, that tells you underneath that is the word Yahweh. So the word of yahweh. Now, I could prove to you again we won't, but I could prove to you that Yahweh can be used of the second person of the Trinity whom we would call Jesus. It can also be used of the first person of the Trinity, whom we would call God the Father. Either one, we're not going to separate. We're going to put those together here for the time being. And that's how God had revealed Himself for the most part to the children of Israel at 725 BC. Anyway, is that I am God. Here I am. They didn't have quite as much emphasis as we have later in the New Testament on the three persons of the Trinity. So the Lord came under the hosea and again, I'm going to say, I think Hosea represents God. Then we have Hosea's wife, who I think is going to represent Israel, especially as it was in that particular day. And then we have the three children, and the three children represent future generations of Israel, and what God is going to do with those future generations. So we'll just take that, we'll file it in the back of our head. We'll question the assumptions as we go along. If we find something along the way that says, no, no, no, there's no way Hosea could be a representative of God. There's no way that Gomer could be a representative of Israel. There's no way that the three children could be a representative of future Israel, future generations of Israel. So if we come to that, then we'll do what a good scientist does and say, nope, that one didn't work. Now I got to have a new hypothesis and start over on it again. Now, there's the basic introduction of the prophet. As you can see, there's really not much there. Hosea, the son of Viri. There is even a debate what tribe he was in. The Jews. Let's see. I've forgotten. The Jews say one tribe, the Christians say another. I didn't even get into the detail of why they have these various traditions of which tribe he comes from. I don't see there's going to make a lot of difference in the way we're going to interpret the story. But truth is, we don't really know a whole lot about this guy. In fact, we almost just know what is revealed in the book of Hosea itself. And so then we come into the meat of the matter beginning in verse two, where it says here the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. And the Lord said to Hosea, go take a wife, take unto the wife of Hodams and children of Hodoms, for the land has committed great hordem departing from the Lord. Now, here's a good place to start. Let's start at the beginning of verse two, the beginning of the word of the Lord by Hosea. There is certainly the truth that this is the first of the presentation of the word of the Lord that came by Hosea. We don't know how Hosea got the word, unlike some other prophets. You know, we think of in times of Daniel, you know, Nebuchadnezzar had his dream. Was it Balchazar had the handwriting on the wall as how God came. We think of Ezekiel, he was picked up and carried off someplace and shown something. Or even in the New Testament, John the apostle, I was in the Spirit on the Lord's day. And here's the vision that was set before. We have no idea how Hosea got this word of the Lord that came to him. Obviously, it's not something God felt that would impact the story. We don't need to know how he got it. All we need to know is this is the word of the Lord. Now, in its most specific sense, the beginning of the Word of the Lord by Hosea starts right here. Here's the word of the Lord by Hosea. I think you could also take it in a broader sense because chronologically, hosea is the first of the prophets that have a book. There are other prophets that don't have a book, like Elijah, for example, elijah and Elisha. So there have been profits before this. And not only major, I shouldn't say major prophets because we have a term that belongs to Isaiah and Jeremiah and those guys, but well known prophets like Elijah and Elisha had come before him. But this was the first guy who has a book in his name, and that means he's before Isaiah, before Jeremiah, before Ezekiel, and before, obviously Nahum and Haggai and Malachi and all those guys. So it could be that we have even a little subtle hint that, hey, this is the beginning of the Word of the Lord in an age in which he speaks directly through the prophets, not even through the kings or through the kings. You know, you get back to, I don't know, the King David and even King Saul and King Solomon, and God is speaking sometimes to and through the kings. But once that ends and that you have the divided kingdom, pretty much if you're going to hear from God, it's going to be because God spoke to or through one of the prophets. So here we come. He's the first guy that is in this, shall we call it the prophetic era. Let's not call it a dispensation because that probably would be too strong of a word, but it's the prophetic era of the law dispensation. There we go again, chronologically, if we wanted to study all the prophets chronologically, now there's a good idea, but if we wanted to do that, we would start with Hosea. So here we go. I'm not saying we're going to do the rest, but here we go. Now he gives the word of the Lord. The Lord said to go take thee a wife of hoardems. Wow, that's kind of an odd command for the man of God, isn't it? And a very odd command if you say this man of God is a representation in some way of God himself. I want you to go take the wife of hordem's. Now, I think you know what hordems mean. If you look at the Hebrew word, it means whoredoms. It is definitely a sexual promiscuity word that is used. So it's not just the English translation, it is very definitely the Hebrew translation. Well, you've probably heard me before and you've heard many other people say that Jose was given the instruction to go marry a prostitute or a Harlot. Yeah, go marry a prostitute. Go marry a harlot. Now that I started studying it, we preachers do a lot of talk before we study. But now I started studying it. I am not so sure that maybe we don't owe gomer is her name we haven't got there yet. Maybe we owe Gomer an apology. Maybe Gomer was not a prostitute and was not a harlot. And yet you say, well, how in the world can that be? He's told to go marry a wife of horedoms. And you yourself said it is a sexual promiscuity word. So even if not harlotte, horedom doesn't get any better. We're not making any kind of improvement. But maybe she wasn't even sexually promiscuous. There is the possibility, I know you're looking at that and you're saying did the preacher go to Iowa and get liberal on us? He's not taking the word of God just for what it says in this. But I want to tell you why there is the possibility that she might have been, let's say, an upstanding woman in the community. She was part of the Jewish women's Society and she went to all the teas and she raised money for the IDF and all the things that a good Jewish woman would do that she did all of those. Maybe there is that possibility. Let's don't define it yet, but let's go on to see take the wife of hordem and children of hordem's. Now, I think that in every rabbinical source I looked in said this, that he doesn't mean take a wife who has children already. But if your wife is one of horedom the children are going to be one of horedoms. And so the wife of ordem that's how the children are going to be associated then the future children of the marriage, the wife of hordes, the children of hordem. Now, here's where we get into what might help us to understand what we mean by whoredoms. But even before we go there, let me ask you a question. Does the Old Testament anywhere that you know of, and you don't have to give the specifics, but does the Old Testament anywhere that you know of use the term adultery when it means idolatry, talk about idolaters and call them adulteresses? It does. And we could go through I wouldn't be surprised if we couldn't find a dozen examples or more of those who are worshipping idols being called adulterers. Now, are they in the narrowest sense of adultery, are they adulterers? Well, the truth is they might not even be married. But it is the picture that is used. And picture is a good word because there are so many similarities that we can understand between a man going off to another God and a man going off to another wife. There is that covenant relationship, that commitment. So adultery, idolatry, not only do they sound kind of close together, but there are some similar things here. And then you could take even the word hoardem. It's not not a word we use in polite society, but you could take that word and look it up through the old testament. I think you would probably also find at least half a dozen, maybe more examples in which Israel most of the time was referred to in a harlotry or horedom kind of sense. But it actually didn't have anything to do with sexual promiscuity. It had to do with her going off and worshipping other gods and going off in that kind of hoardium. So there if we let scripture interpret scripture, we certainly do have the opportunity to say, yeah, okay, adultery, harlotry, hoardem, these are our sexual terms, no doubt about it. But they might refer to an unfaithfulness to the Israel's covenant God. It would be interesting by the way. I kind of doubt I didn't do this study. But it would be interesting to see if that use of the word hoardem or adultery or harlotte or whatever it may be. If that is only used of Israel. You know. Can I don't know. The Babylonians in their worship of Marduk. Could they were they ever called harlots when they went off and worshipped another god? My guess is no. I don't know of any place in the scripture that would have that. So that's a word that really is saved for Israel when she's not in the covenant relationship with her God. Now, let's go on. I started a moment ago to say, let me tell you why I think there's possibility that Gomer was not a prostitute. Here we go. So take this wife of children of hordem's, for the land has committed great hoardem. What kind of sexual promiscuity was the land involved in? Well, dirt doesn't really get into sexual promiscuity, definitely. I mean, it's the same word. They're hoarding, the same English word, it's the same Greek word. It is a sexual promiscuity word. And yet the word land there, it's the word eritz. I think we've talked about it maybe in one of our Abraham servants recently. It's real estate word. It's a dirt word. It's, you know, ground, earth, land. There is what it is. And you can't really use sexual promiscuity words with dirt, really, even in a sense, if you want to take land like, you know, here we are in the land of the free, in the home of the brave, the land as in nation or country. And there's probably a lot of that here in the way it's used. You can't even do that in a sexual promiscuity kind of way because people can get into hoardems in a sexually promiscuous kind of way, but countries can't. Really. If somebody said, hey, you know what, our country had this promiscuous affair with the Chinese, it would be a lot different than saying bubba had a promiscuous affair with Susie. That would be a totally different concept in the mind, even if you're calling it promiscuity. And so one is they have left their values, they have left their commitments, they have left their stated purposes, all of that. And my contention is here the land has committed a great Hoardam. Well, let's take it as the land of Israel because this is the Northern Kingdom and the land of Israel really did move off into Hoardom when they separated from Judah, they left temple worship, they created their own pagan places of worship. They took Judaism and morphed it into their own local religion where it was kind of a Judeopolitical kind of religion that they had made up on their own to sort of appease the need of the people to have have religion and go to religious activities. They even cut off the roads to Jerusalem so you can't go there to worship the one true God because you might slide, you might stay. Yeah, exactly. So they did that sort of the old communist thing of closing off travel in order to keep the loyalty of the people. And so the land committing a great horde. Well that kind of describes Israel when Israel ran off and ran off to another god, so to speak. Let me put it this way. Israel was married to her god and she left him and she went off to another god. Well we might call that hoardim or sexual promiscuity, all these kind of things. And this is given in a very blunt word picture for go and find this wife. Now to add to it and what are we adding to? Let me just remind you, I am proposing that maybe the wife of Hortoms just says I want you to go and find a Northern Kingdom wife. Now that probably in and of itself was kind of hard for the Southern Kingdom prophet. The Southern Kingdom prophet was faithful to his Lord, faithful to Judaism, faithful to the line of David, to the King, faithful to the coming of Messianic reign, all of those things. And so you know to say hey, why don't you go up north to that Horrid nation and find you one of them whoring wives? Oh no, the picture is go find a prostitute. Was she actually a harlot or a prostitute? Maybe so there is that possibility. But I kind of think the land has committed a great hordem. Tells us we're not really talking right in the same sentence here or same verse here. We're not really talking about that kind of sexual promiscuity. We're talking more about idolatry of leaving their first love. If I can borrow from the book of Revelation, in fact it defines horedom right here. That land has committed a great Horedom, departing from the Lord. I would take those words right there. I'm not sure if I'm able to highlight that. Let's try it. Yeah, I did it those words right there, departing from the Lord as the definition in the text of Hoardom. So go take a wife of Hoardem. What do you mean? I mean a woman who has departed from the Lord just like the nation has departed from the Lord. You go find that woman. And so he is obedient here. And he immediately goes, you can take this as this is verse two. He went and took Gomer, the daughter of did blame which conceived and bear him a son. You could take that in one way as my what obedience we see in Gomer. You can take it in another way as saying, Go find you a wife of Hoardem. Okay, I'm off. I've got to go find my wife. Now. You can take it either way, but either way it is. He does go, obviously. I think we don't know the full story here. We just have the part that is important to the story. He went and took Gomer, the daughter of Diblaiim is her father's name. She conceived and bear him a son. We'll get to that in a moment. Gomer and diblaaim. I think that in Gomer and Diblim there's probably some symbolism which is lost to us a little bit in not knowing Hebrew and then moving away from that. Gomer has something to do with completion and probably has more to do with, hey, you've come to the end of the road. He went and married the end of the road for the harlotry. It's about done here. And Diblahim has something to do with Figs. Now, I was a little hesitant to research any further, but all I could find from several Jewish commentators were one like I believe I quoted Rashi here. No, I didn't quote him, but I got the words here. He says, Diblahim referring to Figs here somehow is euphemistic of sexual pleasure. Okay, there we go. My guess is we've lost something in the translation and in the cultural change here that we can't pick up the innuendo that's given here. But I think there probably is some innuendo that's fairly fake and fairly deep here. So he takes daughter he took Gomer daughter, Diblain. I wonder again if the person reading it remember, have any of you ever read, like, I don't know, the Screw Tape letters or something like that by, you know, that famous guy, C. S. Lewis? Thank you. And Screw Tape, I think wasn't he like, a demon that worked for the government or something? I don't know. I guess they all are. But any of us who read the Screwtape Letters or the line The Witch and the Wardrobe, many of those, as soon as we read it, we would know, ah, this is Allegory, I guess you would call it. This is allegory or Pilgrim's Progress. It's famous. It's got a lot of workspace, salvation in it. But nonetheless, it's a famous work, obviously. And you've got the fellow named Christian. Oh, isn't that convenient that the guy headed towards the cross is named Christian, and he meets, I don't know, Mr. Despair along the way. Simple reading of English. You read that and you say, okay, we've definitely got some allegory here and sometimes maybe even some humor here. I kind of. Wonder, when the original people read this, if by the end of verse three, they weren't saying, oh, that's clever. That is really good, right? There some stuff that we're not catching. But nonetheless, Gomer is her name, daughter of Gibblem. She conceived and bear him a son. This is the first child that's going into verse four. And the Lord said to him, that is, the Lord said to Hosea, call his name Jezreal for yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jesrael upon the house of Jehu and will cause to cease the kingdoms of the house of Israel. Okay, now, obviously here there's something going on in names. We only associate it to the children because the children it's almost defined for us, as we'll see in a moment with the other two children as well. It's almost defined. Here's why I want you to call the name Jesuit, or Lol Rama, or Loa Me, as we'll see in a moment, but call him Jesriel. Why? By the way, Jes real and Israel, especially if you speak them in Hebrew, they sound an awful lot of like Jezreal is real. You can almost hear it even as we pronounce it in English. And it's a play on words, I think. Again. You know, I bragged about Dante several times in Dante's trilogy. The Inferno, The Dante's Paradise, dante's Purgatory and Dante's Inferno. I think it was the trilogy, and about how utterly amazing the poetry in it is. I really kind of think that it's lost to us. But if we were the original Hebrew audience, we would be saying, this is so finely put together, the words, they echo to one another. They play off each other just the sound of the words that is given there. And we unfortunately kind of missed some of that. So the Lord said unto him, call his name Jezreel, why? For yet a little while, and I will avenge the blood of Jesrael upon the house of Jehu. Now, we don't know what that means, right? What do you mean you're going to avenge the blood of Jesrael on the house of Jehu? Here we've got two Jesuit going at it. One is the Jesreal who is Gomer's. Almost said. Homer and Gomer. Hosea and Gomer's. Child Jesriel. But there was another Jesreal already, and that Jesuit had a valley named after him. It is named the Valley of Jesriel because Jesuit itself means to sow or to plant. So it's the valley where you do the planting. As a matter of fact, it is. I have heard I've never investigated this, but I heard it once. So it must be true that the Jezreel Valley in Israel today is the most productive farmland per square foot that you can find on Earth. It is the place you want to plant there because it is going to grow. It's going to grow very well for you. Well, it's always been a very fertile valley that is right there. So there was the Valley of Jesriel. Well, avenge the blood of Jesuit on the House of Jehu, there was a guy named Jehu Yehu is probably how they would pronounce it. There was a guy named Yehu. He happened to be a king, as a matter of fact, JERA Bohem, who's now the king, as we're writing, Jeroboam, King of Israel, was a descendant of Jehu. Jahu was the military commander before he became king, he was a military commander who went out and really, for some good purposes, killed the current king. Anybody remember? You got it. They have the toad that squatted upon the throne. And he killed Ahab out there in the Valley of Jes. Rio. Incidentally, there's another name for the Valley of Jesriel, too. Anybody? Armageddon. You're right. The Valley of Armageddon is the same place. So Jehu killed Ahab, and then Jehub went up to the palace, remember, with Ahab's wife, the serpent coiled up around the throne, jezebel. And that's when he looked up to the servants and said something like, I'll paraphrase here. Anybody on my side? And a few of them said, I almost want to give some modern terminology, but I won't. Gave the signal, yes, we're on your side. And you remember, cast her down, boys, and out the window she goes, splat it on the ground, and the dogs ate her blood. And then Ju becomes king. He killed the king and the queen. He became queen. Well, immediately after that, he goes into the land of hordehams and he almost expands the idolatry that the land had given. And so really, I think, call his name, jezreal. Remember the Valley of Jesrel and remember Jehu. I'm going to pay back here. I'm going to finish this off. And this is the promise. Now, Jerebom again is a member of the House of Jehu, so it's not looking too good for him because it goes on. It says, and will cause to cease the kingdom of the House of Israel. Now, again, let's call this the first of the prophetic era. And here he comes to the Northern kingdom. And the northern kingdom has been in existence, I don't know, let's say 250 years. And now at 250 years, here comes Hosea naming his child Jesriel. God is going to plant you. The word Jesuit can either be plant or scatter, either one. You can kind of see the connection in it, taking the seed and scattering it out. So there's again this play on words here. That right. When you get now into what are we on verse five here? I think verse four, just four verses into the first, let's call it written and published prophet. And he says, the kingdom of the House of Israel is going to fall. It is going to be scattered. Here it is. It'll make you a popular guy, won't it? Maybe in Judah make you a popular guy, but not so much in Israel. So he adds to that in verse five, the fall of the House of Israel, it'll come to pass at that day that I will break the bow of Israel in the Valley of Jezreel. Now, again, to break the bow, is that talking literally? I don't know what the bow of Israel would be. If it's talking literally, it's talking again, I would say allegorically as the bow of Israel being the army of Israel, the forces of Israel, the weaponry of Israel, if you will, and God says, I am going to break it and I'm going to do it in the Valley of Jezreel. So here in five verses already we know the name Jesriel is symbolic. We know that the bow of Israel is symbolic. And it sure looks like just a little bit of study, like the name Hosea is symbolic and Gomer is symbolic. Therefore, in these five verses or four verses yeah, five verses. In these five verses, I think we can come down and say, I think probably the horedom is symbolic, too. It's symbolic of their idolatry more than whatever her profession was. Was she a woman of the night? Maybe I'll find out someday that she was. But between now and then, I'm just going to say she was not religiously faithful. And in that way, like the rest of the land, she again might have been an upstanding citizen in downtown Samaria, but she had gone into hoardham in terms of her religious life. And then their children are going to give this picture. The first one, Jesrael, is a picture of the destruction of the house of Israel. Now, from that I'll break the bow in the Valley of J, Israel. I would say that mostly looks like a short term prophecy. Israel is going to fall, it's not going to last. And indeed, that is what happens in just a few years, is that the Assyrians come, they conquer Israel, defeat Israel in the Valley of Jezrael, and Israel, the ten tribes get scattered abroad and the kingdom of Israel never comes back together. In fact, to this day, we call them the lost ten tribes of Israel. They were so jesrailed, so scattered, that they've lost their identity, especially in their terms of their tribal identity. Now, that doesn't mean they don't exist, by the way, but they're certainly scattered. Verses six and seven, then talk about the second child that says, and she conceived again and bear a daughter. And God said unto him, call her name Loruhama, for I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but will utterly take them away. OK, lorhama. Whitney is expecting a child. Whitney, if you have a girl, do not name her Lorhama. It's all ask no louhamas lou hama. The Hebrew word low, right here in some of the text, it's got a dash in between, and some of the text it does not. But Lo is the Hebrew word for it's. The Negator no, not neither if it's all by itself or if it's connected to a word. It's like the alpha in Greek or the letter A in Greek. It negates. Whatever it's hooked onto so low is no, not neither. And then it's connected to ruhama. Actually, the root word is the womb, and yet that's the etymology of the word. That's not what it means, but what it means is it does have this all things motherly. How's that? All things motherly, specifically? Mostly you would say it means mercy or compassion or love. I've given you on the outline. You can look them up if you want. Paul, when he uses it, he uses the word mercy, no mercy. We see that here. Also, Peter uses the word no love, I think it is. But that word, ruhama, it's kind of a broad word, sort of a motherly compassion, motherly care, motherly tenderness, and yet it's all negated. So call her I'll put this really blunt, call her your mama don't like you. That's what you should name her, your mama don't like you. Lou hama. For I will have I will no more have mercy. And this is a different word here than ruhama, but they have the same root word. I will no more have mercy upon the house of Israel, but I will utterly take them away. Just take them away. Gets into that Jesreal word again, I am going to not only am I going to take them away or scatter them, plant them out all over the place, but I am going to have no mercy upon them whatsoever. And so he's going to cause the nation of Israel to seize then a future generation. I'll have no mercy on the house of Israel. I'll utterly take them away. Verse seven. But I will have mercy on the house of Judah and will save them by the Lord their God, and will not save them by bo, nor by sword, nor by battle, nor by horses, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. Here in verse seven, gives that really switches gears a little bit and says, hey, I want you to know I'm just talking about Israel, Judah down in the south. I will have mercy upon the house of Judah. I will save them, he says, and I will save them really in a very powerful way. As a matter of fact, here's a promise to save Judah. God says, I will save Judah, save them by the Lord their God, not by bows or battle, horses, horsemen. That was fulfilled, probably. Second Kings, chapter 19, verse 35. After the Assyrians came and conquered the northern kingdom and scattered them all over the place, and the northern kingdom didn't exist anymore, now they decided, let's go after the southern kingdom as well. And they met the southern kingdom in the Valley of Jesrael, same place. But Second Kings 1935 says, the angel of the Lord went out and smoked the camp of the Assyrians and 104 score and 50 died. Okay, the angel of the Lord did this. Now, I usually take the angel of the Lord to be a representation of the pre incarnate christ the Messiah showed up, the Hoshia showed up, the Savior showed up, and here he said, I will save them by the Lord their God. And so here they are indeed saved. Now, once again, let's ask the question, is this a long term prophecy or a short term prophecy? Here's Hosea in the last years of the reign of Jerem Bohem, and there's just a couple of years of the kingdom that's left, honestly, two or three years at the most when he's giving this prophecy. So he gives the prophecy a couple of years down the road, israel doesn't exist anymore. It's gone. Go a few years beyond that, and the angel of the Lord comes, and he shows mercy upon the house of Judah, and he saves them. There is a real sense in which you can say, this is all fulfilled prophecy. I would say to this point, and what are we on verse six here? To this point, that's as far as we can go. We have prophecy that we know has been fulfilled. But you also know that sometimes prophecy has a double fulfillment, that there is the upfront short term fulfillment, and there's also a long term fulfillment. If you've read any of the Bible at all, you know that Hosea gets quoted quite a bit into the future in the New Testament, and it seems to have more of a future still in the New Testament, a future connotations. So I think we could take this and look at this. The Lord coming down and having mercy and saving them in the valley of Jes Rio. He's going to save them, the valley of Jesuit, which we called a moment ago, the valley of Armageddon, and the Lord's going to come down, and he's going to save them not by bone, nor by sword, nor by battle, by horses, nor by horsemen. He is going to come, and the zeal of the Lord of hosts is going to accomplish this. I think we've probably got a secondary application or a secondary prophecy that's given. Now, all we can do right now is speculate that there's a secondary prophecy that's given. It's certainly not directly found in the text. In fact, at this point, nothing is directly found in the text. Name your daughter Loruhama. That's all that's found in the text, and it tells us why, okay, I have just a few moments left before I'm even more out of time, and so let me go ahead and finish versus 89, because it won't take as long and we'll get the third child in. It says, now when she had weaned Lorahama, she conceived and bear a son, son number two, child number three then said, God call his name low AMI. You know what low means? Right? Not AMI. My people. Not my people. Call his name lo AMI, for ye are not my people and I will not be your God. That's a blunt word to give to God's people. You're not my people. I am not your God. Yet the number of the children of Israel shall be as the sands of the sea. We're going to stop right there and pick up their next week in verse ten. So here you're going to be not my people. You're going to be not my God. You're going to cease to exist yet via the sands of the sea. What's happening here? What's this? The prophecy of this has got to go and be more long term. So I think that what you've got here in versus one through nine, which is what we're looking at in hosea tonight, versus one through nine is nothing but setting the stage. Let's put it this way. Savior, I want you to go marry the woman. Can I put it this way? Remember who sings at the end? What? The heavy lady. Okay, I was wanting someone else to say it, so let's put it this way, kind of allegorically speaking, hey, Savior, I want you to go marry the heavy lady. And she's warming up and you're going to have some kids like scattered, not having mercy. Not my people. That's the end of scene one. It just leaves you sitting on the edge of your seat saying, what's going to happen here? Obviously there's a little bit of insight into why would you name those names? But I would almost say, at least for a Jewish mind, god could have just said, hosea, Gomer, Jezreel, Lower, Lama, Loa, Me, and they would have said, wow, I can't wait to hear how this ends. That's going to be big. So one through nine, set the stage and that's what we have done now. And you can sit on the edge of your seat till next week when we pick up from there into chapter one, verse ten, which I will already tell you in every Hebrew Bible you find, is chapter two, verse one. The Hebrews break it off right there and put a chapter break. It's one of the few places the modern Hebrew Bibles don't go with the modern Christian chapter and verse. Mostly they've adopted our chapter and verse into theirs, but here they disagreed and they start chapter two. And so we'll start our chapter one, verse ten there chapter two, verse one, next week. In all of that, let me lead to some word of prayer and I'll tell you about Sunday here. Heavenly Father. We're grateful again to be able to look into the word of God. Speculate a little bit. Make some assumptions and some premises. And we just pray that as we read through the word of God. First of all. That you would help us to pick up the little insights in innuendo that are given all through this book and to help understand those. To not make application where there is none. But also not to miss any where there is some. And that our study and the insight that you give us together would help in that. As we come to understand this what is already appearing to be a rather ominous prophecy of the future. And as we go from this place, we pray that you'd keep us safe as well as those who are online friends tonight, and that all of us would go from this place with them with the blessing of being here. We ask this in Jesus name, amen. And with that, let's see, sunday morning, 945, I'll be back to the Hermeneutics lesson. We've been off that about three weeks. And so we're going to get back to how to interpret the Bible. And then 1045, we're back to Abraham, the Life and Times of Abraham. And we're going to pick up in Genesis, chapter twelve, I think, verse ten, unless I decide to back up and hit a couple more things on verses one through nine, but I don't think I will. But anyway, we'll be doing all of that and outside of that, everything's normal this weekend. I'm normal, you're normal. Keep telling ourselves that. God bless you, normal people. You are dismissed.